THE Christmas lights are all over town and a thin and occasionally melting blanket of snow covers the ground in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York approaching the middle of December.

We’re already thinking about the 2020 Saratoga Race Course meeting but first need to make it through the crush of the holidays and into the New Year, and oh, maybe a pause to look back at 2019.

Racing in America in 2019 unfolded like no other and many – if not all – wouldn’t mind a bit if there were no sequel in the immediate or distant future.

The year started rather straightforward with Gulfstream Park’s Pegasus World Cup card, which included a turf race for the first time, and early Triple Crown preps dominating the news cycle. The headlines changed soon enough after City Of Light and Bricks And Mortar won the signature events on Pegasus Day and War Of Will, Code Of Honor, Haikal, Tacitus, Tax, Omaha Beach, By My Standards and Maximum Security clicked off victories in classic preps.

A rash of breakdowns at Santa Anita Park, including the loss of Grade 1 winner Battle Of Midway, plagued the winter-spring meeting and continued to add up well into the season.

Track management pulled the plug on racing and training in early March, shifted or cancelled several stakes races and investigated the cause. A significantly larger amount of rain for the winter months in southern California was initially pegged as the cause although opinions on other culprit ranged from pressures the racing office put on horsemen to medication use to whip use.

Disqualification

Those topics continued to be hot-button through the course of the year, which saw the first disqualification for an on-track incident in 145 runnings of the Kentucky Derby when Maximum Security was taken down for bumping at the top of the stretch. Country House, who wouldn’t race again in 2019, was elevated from second to first with Maximum Security taken all the way down 17th.

That story also resonated well into the summer and fall, first because owners Gary and Mary West filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the stewards ruling and later because Maximum Security resumed his career and continued to win.

By seasons’ end Maximum Security accumulated three Grade 1 victories, in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park and Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, from late March to early December.

The season’s other classic winners – stablemates War Of Will (Preakness) and Sir Winston (Belmont) from Mark Casse’s barn – didn’t win again in 2019. That leaves Maximum Security favourite to take home champion three-year-old male honours. He’d even have a claim for 2019’s Horse of the Year if not for two other contenders whose connections eschewed the typical path that ends with North America’s most prestigious award.

Leading contenders

Bricks And Mortar and Mitole, who cumulatively won 12 of 13 starts and nine Grade 1 stakes, are considered the two leading contenders for Horse of the Year honours. Voters will probably give the edge to Bricks And Mortar, probably America’s best grass horse since Wise Dan in 2012 and 2103.

Bricks And Mortar and Irad Ortiz win the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational in Gulfstream for trainer Chad Brown \ Healy Racing.

Bricks And Mortar went undefeated in six starts, starting with the inaugural Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf and ending with the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf. Mitole did his best work sprinting and racked up wins in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, Forego, Met Mile and Churchill Downs, all Grade 1s.

The season-ending wins by Bricks And Mortar and Mitole of course came at Santa Anita, which went under scrutiny from Breeders’ Cup officials in the late spring and summer. Everything stayed put when the Breeders’ Cup board voted unanimously to return the championship to the southern California venue for a record 10th time.

Amid the literal backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains and the figurative cloud of uncertainty left by the breakdowns, Santa Anita hosted a memorable two days of racing. The Future Stars card opened the action Friday, November 1st and the main event, Championship Saturday, went off without a hitch, until the finale.

The breakdown of Mongolian Groom in the stretch of the mile-and-a-quarter Classic ended a race-by-race sigh of relief by track officials, horsemen and fans alike and cast a pall over the crowd of 67,000 strong.

Patrons craned their necks to the left, watching handlers and veterinarians tend to the stricken Mongolian Groom, instead of looking to the right to see be part of what should have been a toast to Vino Rosso and his winning connections.

Vino Rosso, disqualified from a victory in the Jockey Club Gold Cup a month before, avenged that defeat with a dominating performance in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic. He gave Todd Pletcher his first win in the race and salvaged a largely disappointing year for North America’s most dominating trainer the last two decades.

He also provided Irad Ortiz Jr., far and away America’s leading rider by purses won and the favorite for his second straight Eclipse Award, with his fourth Breeders’ Cup win on the weekend.

Most of that wound up lost in the din of the breakdown. It certainly played well for the anti-racing factions and on general news websites and newspapers. Jay Privman, Daily Racing Form’s southern California correspondent and unfortunate to have a front-row seat for the drama all year at Santa Anita, could only mutter one word heading to the winner’s circle for the post-race formalities.

“Almost,” Privman said, straight-faced and looking out blank at the track and peaks above.

Walking around the grandstand and clubhouse gave off more of the same, a somewhat celebratory mood that always comes at the end of a big event combined with hints of melancholy.

That moment certainly represented a lot of the good and bad from 2019 in America. How about we change gears a bit and bring things home on a slightly more pleasant note, in the spirit of the holidays.